Guild Wars 2

And not a single word was spent by ANet in regards of this matter. Does this mean it really is an intended “bug”?

Now I know the game doesn’t have a monthly fee, but resorting to this kind of sneaky strategies to increase income? I must say I expected far better. I am disappointed.

Well, to be fair, the patch note mentioned nothing about an increased drop rate, but an “improved” one. For whom this is an improvement they didn’t say.

You have to be careful about how to interpret the semantics in ANet’s statements these days.

Dont see at all how this can be a improvement…maybe in terms of them leading ppl to buying gems by making farming /gettin ectos even harder..

I noticed a wonderful spike of drop rate over the lost shores weekend but it dropped back to normal after the event finished on Sunday night. Even in WvW the drop rate actually felt “right”. Does anyone else think this is a coincidence that drops rates were great when there was a free trial and event over the weekend which suddenly dropped off?

Elthurien.8356:

I noticed a wonderful spike of drop rate over the lost shores weekend but it dropped back to normal after the event finished on Sunday night. Even in WvW the drop rate actually felt “right”. Does anyone else think this is a coincidence that drops rates were great when there was a free trial and event over the weekend which suddenly dropped off?

I wouldn’t call that normal. Before the lost shores event I could get corrupted lodestones at a reasonable rate while farming. Today I farmed for 3 hours and didn’t see a single one. Guess I’ll have to pass on that corrupted weapon… -_-

I farm a lot. Here are my observations.

Before the recent patches in which they changed the dye drop and the champion drops, I would get 3-4 rares an hour, plus tons of other stuff.

Now? I am lucky to get 1 rare every 2-3 hours.

Tonight I farmed for about 5 hours in various places. I got 1 rare total. I should have had at least 10 rares. I farmed karka for 1 hour and got 1 rare, 8 Powerful bloods and 2 dyes. I then left for 2 hours and came back for 1 hour. 3 Powerful bloods. Left for 1.5 hours. Came back for 1 hour and got NOTHING. Even in those other spots in between I got almost nothing. I have maximum MF and was using a MF booster the last hour. This is more than RNG because everyday I come back after work which is 24 hours that first hour of farming is awesome, then the rest of the night is nothing.

6 pages of discussion and not a single word from the Anet team regarding a possible bug which seems to be effecting everyone not doing Fractals, i for one wont be logging back in til this is resolved or replied to, wasted 9 hours yesterday running about killing Champs / Vets you name it i killed it for not 1 single rare….all we ask is a simple response from someone in the know……ill try again in a couple of days until then this game is getting shelved

Elthurien.8356:

I noticed a wonderful spike of drop rate over the lost shores weekend but it dropped back to normal after the event finished on Sunday night. Even in WvW the drop rate actually felt “right”. Does anyone else think this is a coincidence that drops rates were great when there was a free trial and event over the weekend which suddenly dropped off?

Yes, it probably falls into the same “We’ve updated the game for routine maintenance only. No content changes were included.” that stopped the karka events on all the overflows. Why they change stuff and have to lie about it, like we’re a bunch of morons who wouldn’t notice it’s beyond me. But we’ll see what the next update brings I guess.

This reminds me of D3. Their dev team was so concerned with market “balance” that their drop system was so neutered that their game was not fun*.
They’re getting better so I’ve heard, but it’s way too late and pretty much everyone has stopped D3.

If the markets are perfectly balanced but the game is not fun*, it doesn’t matter one bit. Why repeat the same mistake D3 just did a few months ago (and are now learning from)?

kitten the market. Bring back the fun*.

*fun: in this context – meaning the thrill of seeing STUFF fall all the time, and rare-ish items on a frequent enough basis to keep things exciting. Think Vegas — 90% return on slot machines.

Aelaren.3784:

Have anyone tried to repost it in Bugs? since now we have AMA answer and all?

They are just barely getting back to people about the south shore event and saying they will be sending something out next week how long do you think they can shuffel their feet one this

Aelaren.3784:

Have anyone tried to repost it in Bugs? since now we have AMA answer and all?

There is a new thread in bugs about this issue, with some extra detail and a little bit of “this is what it seems like” to help explain the situation. And some grumpiness at the delay in anything happening considering the dye drop bug was noted and fixed quickly because it was in our favour.

garraeth.3267:

This reminds me of D3. Their dev team was so concerned with market “balance” that their drop system was so neutered that their game was not fun*.
They’re getting better so I’ve heard, but it’s way too late and pretty much everyone has stopped D3.

If the markets are perfectly balanced but the game is not fun*, it doesn’t matter one bit. Why repeat the same mistake D3 just did a few months ago (and are now learning from)?

kitten the market. Bring back the fun*.

*fun: in this context – meaning the thrill of seeing STUFF fall all the time, and rare-ish items on a frequent enough basis to keep things exciting. Think Vegas — 90% return on slot machines.

They’d be taking wrong assumptions. Who on GW2 has ever complained for getting drops too easily? No one I believe.
This isn’t D3. They said the game would have been fun and different from other MMOs, without grindfests and such. They can’t change that all of a sudden, because it is that way they could lose players.

KevinEvo.7061:

I have maximum MF and was using a MF booster the last hour.

The problem with this bug is that magic find makes it worse, now whether this is because of a “long standing bug” with magic find (when even before this bug it lowered the drop rate the more magic find you had) or by design we don’t know. I’ve never got a response about it from official sources when I asked about it, and even got “in trouble” for “bumping” a thread which asked for official feedback on it.

Hermes.7014:

garraeth.3267:

This reminds me of D3. Their dev team was so concerned with market “balance” that their drop system was so neutered that their game was not fun*.
They’re getting better so I’ve heard, but it’s way too late and pretty much everyone has stopped D3.

If the markets are perfectly balanced but the game is not fun*, it doesn’t matter one bit. Why repeat the same mistake D3 just did a few months ago (and are now learning from)?

kitten the market. Bring back the fun*.

*fun: in this context – meaning the thrill of seeing STUFF fall all the time, and rare-ish items on a frequent enough basis to keep things exciting. Think Vegas — 90% return on slot machines.

They’d be taking wrong assumptions. Who on GW2 has ever complained for getting drops too easily? No one I believe.
This isn’t D3. They said the game would have been fun and different from other MMOs, without grindfests and such. They can’t change that all of a sudden, because it is that way they could lose players.

Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I agree with you that no one was complaining about too many drops.

I’m just saying that this “bug” may not be a bug at all, but rather a design decision made to “tighten” the TP (make prices rise via scarcity), and because a lot of devs I know have the philosophy that “everyone can’t have lots of stuff”. And I was using D3 as a recent example to illustrate.

There’s a philosophy among devs that I know, where they believe that there is a bell curve of who has what amount of stuff. There’s the bottom percent, the middle percent (this represents the largest number of players), and the top percent.

I’m saying that D3 shifted the bell curve to the left (verrry few people had any [good] stuff dropping) – to the extreme! People weren’t getting good drops for MONTHS (literally). And I’m seeing that start to happen in GW2 now. Not just with this “bug” (which, I’m wondering if it’s really a bug after all – since a bug in our favor would be fixed overnight), but with ANet’s general philosophy of wanting everything to be a grind (Ascended, Legendaries, etc. – vs/ an exciting quest, hunt, gameplay, whatever).

I’m just suggesting that the GW2 dev’s learn from D3’s mistakes. Now, finally, the D3 dev’s are starting to realize that they are making is a GAME and not the real world, so if everyone has TONS of stuff it’s not a bad thing (like it would be in the real world).

tldr: grind is bad. more drops are good. overabundance of items is good. this is not real life so dev’s shouldn’t try to orchestrate it as such.

This bug is semi-blocking my progress at the moment in the sense that all 3 of my lvl80 characters are running out of coin, and using them to farm is a long boring process with this bug as you need alot more time to make coin. And this bug is also semi-preventing me from leveling my lower level characters who, because of the low drop rates, have not been able to upgrade their armor equiv to their level from drops so fighting stuff at their level involved dieing alot more, increasing waypoint and repair costs, and fighting lower level stuff means they dont get the armor upgraded to the level they need.

Not enjoyable

I dont even have enough coin to go run around WvW for a few hours (and pay for the enevitable repairs)

I think someone put a Minus instead of a plus on their magic find code lol. I killed 25 mobs straight in cursedshore to get the full luck bonus and didn’t get 1 item to drop. noting, not even a crap stained rag after 25 mobs. Would be nice if a content designer could show the common courtesy to let us know if they are even looking in to this. Six pages. WTKitten

It’s part of any RPG earning rewards.

That’s not possible at the moment.

Seems GW2 has become pay to win…

Anet stated that Guild Wars 2 was meant to be an mmo without the “grind” of other mmos. So why then do they nerf drop rates? Straight cash homey. This smells of a money grab plain and simple. I’m a Collector’s Edition owner, I bought a few gems early on, they’ll not get another dime from me.

The cash shop in GW didn’t destroy the game but this is GW2 and I smell trouble.

Well I first posted this bug 7 days ago, got a glimmer of hope on Monday when Chris stopped dogging the question and at least admitted it was a perceived or potential issue and said they would investigate first thing Tuesday. Since then, no word, no information, confirmation of the status of this situation and absolutely no sense of urgency to communicate their findings or announce a fix regardless of the evidence put forward.
To that end I guess I’ve resigned myself to their indifference, as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them join them. I may or may not continue to play, up until my in game cash runs out but under no circumstances am I going to dungeon crawl in this or any other game in order to progress my character.

The thing that gets me is.

During the mad king event there was a loot bug that ment people could loot chests every 30 minutes and get exotics/rares in large numbers – this loot/chest issue was fixed within 6 hours (and nerfed into the ground to be pointless to even do).

Now we have a loot issue on the other end of the scale, champions/bosses aren’t dropping much at all which was ment to be changed in the last patch (i’ve had 1 blue drop 4 levels lower than me, and that’s it in a week), an entire zone has terrible loot drops (karka really don’t like giving out loot), and across the board loot seems to be dropping less than ever – over a week later still nothing has been done.

So 6 hours to fix an issue that gave to much loot, and over a week to not fix an issue that gives out to little loot.
—-
MMOs are largely about loot drops (it’s true, loot drops are a very large aspect of MMOs), so an issue with loots drops (on either end of the scale) is a MAJOR issue and should be high priority to be fixed ASAP.

MajorMelchett.6042:

So 6 hours to fix an issue that gave to much loot, and over a week to not fix an issue that gives out to little loot.

This just shows how ANET cares about us… and having fun in this game.

They spent 5-6 years developing this game and no one thought to make adjusting loot drops something easily modified/fixed? The DR code has developed a life of its own and will soon be announced as the first stage of the Real Forbin Project and the devs are all enslaved to it?

Current drop rates are terribly nerfed, ‘a blind man could see it with a cane’ as Doc McCoy once said. Three rares in 8 hours moving constantly all over Cursed Shore in full exotic MF with MF food and 25 stacks of MF is not ‘a bad run of Luck with the RNG’, it is puppy or perhaps even ducklings (tired of kittens, thank you.)

Oh, cool, they only care about the people doing Fractals – awesome.

In light of all the other recent events, did you entertain the thought that the nerf was intended(with reasons other than anti-bot measures)? Their big goal was to slow down people from getting Legendaries, so the journey lasts longer. With that in mind, this nerf sounds like it’s very effective at doing just that.

I’m not saying they did it on purpose, I’m just saying they have a reasonable motive to have done it.

@ ASB.4295

I’d actully say it would have more of a chance of being done in the hope to get more people into FOTM, right now it’s the best place for loot in the entire game and has the highest tier of loot aswell.

This is, if it was done on purpose – i have no idea if it was.

I’m glad to see it’s not just me experiencing way lower-than-usual drops. Champion fights seem hardly worth it since usually what I get is a bone or maybe, if I’m lucky, a white. Last night I played for three hours with my lowest-level character, cleared most of Queensdale, and didn’t even have to hit a merch once (and he’s only got the starter backpack and two four-slot bags.) And that was after running every event I could find, and some of them twice.

Yep. Log in a low level alt , think about it & log out. No point playing for no reward.

My 2nd lvl 80 is still in the same armour as when she hit 80. Because drops are so bad.

Again, log out..

well i can confirmed this, farming orr these days with my170% MF ele, i only got 5 rares in an hour which is VERY PATHETIC (and i’m not tagging since CS is real dead now – to give an accurate measure i stay at least 90% of any DE in peni/shel/jof/tar/plinx)

Haven’t logged on since this happened, just popped in here to see if it was fixed yet. As it isn’t I guess I will go back to XCOM.

Have to admit that I have kind of lost my enthusiasm for the game in that time so not sure if I will be back. Might give DF:UW a whirl instead I think.

I would say there is a slight increase in champ drops but it’s barely noticeable.
On the other hand that small increase is so insignificant when you compare it to the board wide nerf to drops they did in the rest of the game.
Anet just seems lost when it comes to loot tables and in game economy ‘coze if you look at it from a bit further away you can see crafting is almost dead, 90% of events don’t get done ’coze there is no reward for it, same goes for champs, instances are the only thing where it seems just a bit better atm and money sinks are outrageous in all this (WvW, WP, 15%TP, death).

4 hours of farming in Orr gave a whopping 5 rares and from all the moldy bags i gathered i got 3 tier6 mats , 1 blood and 2 armored scales.

Good times.

Is all the loot in game now in fractals? Should we just forget about open world pve and WvW?

Not to mention,there is no longer any viable way for those who solo to remain competitive unless open work loot gets fixed. Also those of us who didn’t rush to get their exotics are left out in the cold now as we can no longer earn enough money to purchase them, and there is now limited opportunity to complete events for Karma since the open world is being abandoned for Fractals. Sad, so very sad.

I farmed for 3 hours yesterday in Frostgorge, in the vain attempt to shore up some Vicious Fangs. I ended up with 2 Vicious Fangs, 11 T5 Fangs and a few blue and white items. Not one Masterwork or Rare.

I have full MF gear, MF rune on my weapon, Guild Boosts and food items – it makes absolutely no difference at all. Is this working as intended?

I think a lot of us would like to know if this is now the way loot will be or if there is some complex bug in the loot tables causing this. I know each time it is the roll of the dice, but something has changed recently

3 days (apx. 25 hours) and only one yellow drop. Ok so I don’t use MF gear, but this is just ridiculous. And NO the champions are not fixed I have killed many in that time and have gotten maybe 2 blues and a green in total from all of them.

Please look into this ANet.

250 Vicious Fangs 62g
50 Ectos 18g 32s

+ 250 Ectos 93g

= 183g (Current market Prices)

100 Gems Trade for 1.24g

You are talking over £100 in gem purchases for ONE item

To be honest I would prefer a monthly subscription (normally between £7 and £10) and “normal” drop percentages

Edited – maths was a bit wrong, but in general, point still stands, 10 months of subscription fees for a “normal loot percentage” (Hell in 10 months I should be able to get the Rarest of rare drops in ANY OTHER MMO)

That’s taking into account that Vicious Fangs were up in value 180%+ yesterday. But yeah, I agree – it’s absolutely nuts for ONE item.

The prices will only increase more players reach higher level fractals, and NEED ascended gear to progress, but who is doing all the farming for the raw materials?

The guys on here (the farmer guys), I sympathise with, why should they go out and blast 4-8 hours and get nothing. Hell, when I farm now, the mats go straight into my bank, who knows what ridiculous parameters they will put on the next set (Yes I know they said they wouldn’t but…….)

Inflation will eventually get out of control, players will leave and the economy will crash.
They better do something if they don’t want things to get grim.

Looking at everyones comments. On the AMA Areanet answered the question about this. It is a bug and they will fix it soon.

The only T6 mat that is stable seems to be Ancient Bones – obviously with all the farming that occurred on Orr maps. Anything else, is just an enormous jump.

One thing that always puzzled me was why there was not a chance at receiving fine materials back when salvaging armor/weapons! Hell, you can get globs back from Rares, even though you don’t use globs when creating them!

Honestly even if they returned drop rates back to “normal,” they would still be pretty bad. GW2 drops and loot in general has been the worst I have ever seen in a game.

Penguin.9482:

Honestly even if they returned drop rates back to “normal,” they would still be pretty bad. GW2 drops and loot in general has been the worst I have ever seen in a game.

Well, no that’s a bit exaggerate. If you played Lineage 2 pre-GoD you’d know that there’s a much deeper level in the hell of grinding.

SO, I get to Cursed Shore last night to try to make some cash, and guess what, Jofast faild because only 2 of us were doing it, only 8 people were doing events between Shelter and Pent, and I saw no-one else in the 2 hours I was there.

This is definitely killing open world, oh and as for loot, I got more junk than anything else in that 2 hours but I did manage to make 1G in TP and merch sales by pure luck, which ment even selling the craftables (which I actually need some of but coin was more important as I had less than 25s).

The loot drop bug means the philosophy of “you dont have to grind” has gone out the window. You dont make enough running around randomly killing stuff to buy the things you need, so you end up sticking to the areas where you know you are going to get a better result, whether it be the jofast/pent/shelter run, or farming particular mobs for crafting materials.

The ONLY ways you can avoid the grind is either get lucky and get dropped an expensive precurser (which only covers your costs for a short while), or dump real $$$ into the game, some of us do not have trust accounts you know.

Am I annoyed, yes, since this bug came out, I’ve had to use my coin (across all characters) to get exotic gear for one characters, across 8 characters I have maybe 5G, and fast running out with WP and repair costs.

Hermes.7014:

Penguin.9482:

Honestly even if they returned drop rates back to “normal,” they would still be pretty bad. GW2 drops and loot in general has been the worst I have ever seen in a game.

Well, no that’s a bit exaggerate. If you played Lineage 2 pre-GoD you’d know that there’s a much deeper level in the hell of grinding.

Thing is in 5 or 10 years ago mmo were based on grind …

I played L2 (since release) and many others like that
you spent month farming 1 item and you were happy about that

Today kids call grind everything they just want to log in and have same items as guy who spent 1000 hours on that game.
WoW did this with removing pre quests and introducing badges for lower tiers …

that was little off topic

problem with GW2 is that this game is advertised as non grind game
and when I get 1 rare per 12 hours of play at max lvl then yes its grind when I need what 30 ecto? for exotic crafted set?
this will not hurt that much hardcore players who will move to fractals but its hurting everyone who is playing casually
and this makes it harder for newer players who just got to 80. Orr is deserted everyone is in fractals of course requiring exotic gear to enter …

as for me personally I have no interest in doing remaining world completion or even levelling alts when only upgrade I can get is from karma and no drops at all

If we get confirmation that this is not bug but all drops were moved to fractals then I am leaving this game for good as they are much more better grind games if I wanted one
also I cancelled my 50euro worth of gems until this is resolved ….

Got more t6 materials for a SINGLE HARPY in fractals w/dungeon gear than I did farming 80 content in the world in full MF gear for an hour.

Something is seriously wrong.

I wanted to add my voice to the concerns of other members of the community. Something feels… off.

Last night I decided to do some Owain(I think that’s her name) DE while farming Karkas. I had just finished my Ori runs and barely played… I got all whites for one hour of farming. This was at full MF armor, boost, and banner.

I just wanted to see if this was all just people panicking, but I think this is actually a bug. I am going to do another hour+ hour of farming without any MF to see what is causing this (broken DR, broken MF, etc.).

Dungeons require concentration and a certain block of time, but I don’t have time for that because I tend to go afk a lot. Doing Cursed Shore events is the easiest way for me to make money, because they only take a few minutes, and I can do other things during the downtime. I only heard about the Arah farming yesterday, so I missed out on that… If they can hotfix it that quickly, maybe we’ll hear word about the drop rate soon?

hopefully this will be fixed soon. this was from the reddit Q/A:

49. Magic find and just drops in general (with or without MF gear) seems to have been greatly altered to a minimum. Also, in the most recent patch it was noted that Veterans/Champions should always drop something at least, irregardless of what quality. Is the system working as you intended since the update or are there most definitely problems with it as it stands? Also, if it is ‘working as planned’ why the huge change in drops? Coupled with diminishing rewards it is hard to farm legitly and almost points the player to the Cash Shop instead of relying on self-reliance. Thanks in advance!

So yep you are right this is the question i have been likely dodging the most? The reason being is that it requires investigation. Vet and Champs should give good loot and there are a number of reports on perceived decrease in the frequency of drops. I will be discussing this in depth with the Production and Design team tomorrow and we will hopefully have more info soon